Pre-Blizzcon 2009
Posted by TimothyAug 17
For my 3rd year in a row, I’m setting out once again to the Bizzcon convention in Anaheim happening this weekend. Hosted by Blizzard Entertainment, they plan to offer insight into gaming’s largest franchises: Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft.
This year the reality was set upon me that due to traveling earlier this summer I wouldn’t be able to attend, however a friend of mine decided on a whim that she and her brother would love to go to this year’s show. We’re all poor so plane tickets for the 3 of us weren’t as financially viable (like I said I’d already done some traveling earlier this summer) as just carpooling it, so we’re going on a road trip. In real life if you ask me about this trip I’d say I’m dreading it, but I may have played that one a bit too thick as I know the fun of the trip will vastly outweigh the terrible terrible drive ahead of us.
I’m looking forward to many things at this year’s show. The first time I went Starcraft 2 had just been unveiled and it was announced that they’d have playable demos at the show. At the time the lines were so obnoxiously long I stood in one line, played maybe 2 games and called it a day. The game was great back then. Last year I was far more determined to get in some quality time with SC2 and I played for around 6 hours in the last man standing area. This year I was hoping beta would have started before now and my appetite for this game would be a little diminished however this is not the case. As such I’m in overdrive for playing and will see about playing as much as possible if not more than last year. However since I’ll be there with friends and they aren’t much into the RTS thing, I may have to abstain.
An NDA embargo was lifted today concerning a lot of single player elements (see my reader shares today) from gameplay in late July. My continued speculation is this: until the press is shown Battle.net 2.0 for the first time, the beta won’t start. I also think that since it’s been said that Battle Report 4 will come out sometime in September, I think that’s the earliest we will see beta, but only if some Battle.net 2.o info is unveiled. So this is putting beta farther and farther out of my mind. Kind of a bummer, but ah well.
On the Warcraft front, lots of rumors abound about Cataclysm. One of the most prominent WoW news outlets has a huge barrage of info: here. I don’t have too much to say about it, but I do have a sneaky suspicion that the info will be unveiled at Blizzcon.
Diablo 3, from what I played last year and my unfair impressions, doesn’t have me too excited for what’s going to be shown. I expect another class to be revealed and maybe some more mechanics, but the game feels so early in development it’s not yet time to get excited about it. Also, the game stations will probably again highlight either solo play or team play at a low level with weak gear. My memories of Diablo 2 are having uber gear and high levels completely decimating armies of monsters with little downtime. This isn’t the impression you get and not the impression that you get to have with the demos. If you load up Diablo 2 and run around without being twinked around, that’s what you get to play, and for me, that wasn’t what I remembered making Diablo 2 so great.
As for the unannounced MMO, some people have slim hopes of that being announced. I’m extremely skeptical of this since the Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 stuff that they show off are extremely mature builds of these games. I don’t know when they started working on this game but I feel like the timeline is far too early for it to be announced. If I had a guess as to what Blizzard expects to get done, I’d say it’s Starcraft 2, WoW Expansion, Diablo 3, then unannounced MMO, with possibly another WoW Expansion after Diablo 3. Heck, maybe even the Zerg expansion for Starcraft 2 somewhere in there as well.
I’ll be taking pictures and twittering so expect lots of action there and probably a lot less reader link spam for a few days. I’m leaving Tuesday night and coming back sometime on Monday.
